The Psychology of Nations / A Contribution to the Philosophy of History

by G. E. Partridge

The third idea which is beginning to make great changes in the whole field of the industrial life and throughout all the practical life is the idea of economy. This means that in many ways questions of the values, the purposes, and the ways and means of what is done in the world are being sharply examined. Labor has been uncritical of its purposes, and lavish and wasteful of its energies, however watchful it may have been of its rights. Production has been governed too much by desire, too little by careful consideration of need. Distribution has been carelessly conducted, allowing large losses of time and material. Consumption has been quite as careless as the rest, and has been thoroughly selfish as well. The war has changed many of our ideas. Thrift has become a word with a new meaning. We see what industry at its worst might do in the world, and on the other hand what wise control of all the motives and processes that enter into labor and all the economic life might accomplish.

Some of these changes are coming from readjustment in the coördination of industrial processes themselves. We hear much of standardization and stabilization. An economic technique and the control of fluctuating conditions might do much to increase the efficiency of industry in every way. This idea of the application of scientific procedure to life we see extending to the control of the energies of the human factor. We have already spoken of guarantees that affect the spirit and the morale of labor. We hear of the prevention of unemployment, the removal of the bugbear of "losing the job." Most advance of all is being made in the application of the principles of mental and physical hygiene and of scientific management to the actual details of movement and the whole process of expenditure of energy, counting costs in terms of time and energy, in much the same way as all the items of value that enter into production are estimated. Some writers, for example Gilbreth, see in this movement a great advance. It is a way of giving equal opportunity to all. Economy becomes a factor in freedom, since it helps to eliminate the drudgery and depression of toil.

Plainly, then, economy or thrift has a much wider meaning than mere saving. It is many-sided, and the study of economy in the use of essentials is but a part of it. The war has, of course, emphasized this, and this idea of saving has served the purpose of awakening an interest in the whole theory and purpose of work. There is a better understanding of values, and of the difference between the essential and the unessential, and we see that not all labor that commands pay is useful labor. Many things that the public knew but little about before are becoming better understood. Industry, finance, business, taxes, transportation, have all to some extent become popular subjects. The present high cost of living raises questions in the theory of the economic aspect of life that have compelled the attention of the public. The theory of money, interest, savings, foreign investments, the place of gold in the world's economy is carried a step further and is popularly more extended. We hear all sorts of proposals about the production, the distribution and the consumption of goods, which are intended to make living easier and less expensive. Increased production of staples and more direct route from producer to consumer are urged upon all, and the economists have many suggestions for increasing our prosperity: while financiers try to direct to the best purpose our investments at home and abroad. Fisher attacks the whole theory of costs at what he believes its root, suggesting a plan of "stabilizing the dollar itself" by using the index numbers of standard articles as units of value, and regulating the weight of gold in the dollar according to the fluctuations of these. All these plans, hasty and narrowly conceived as many of them seem to be, are of interest and have value, for they indicate a serious determination to solve the fundamental problems of the practical life.

Any educational theory that could hope to deal adequately with the needs and the impending changes in the industrial situation of to-day must take into consideration the basic facts both of the individual and the social life. Teaching of industry and all attempts to teach vocation must be seen by all now to be but a small part of education with reference to the industrial life. We must do much more fundamental things than these. We must plan far ahead and seek to lay a firm foundation for the idea of coöperation which appears to be the leading thought of industrialism to-day. Every individual, we should say, ought to be educated in the fundamentals of labor, so that he may understand for himself what labor means. Finally the idea of thrift in all its implications must be made a part of the educational program. All this may seem too ideal and impracticable to think of in connection with industrial education, but if we consider industry and industrialism as the center of our whole civilization, as it appears to be now, what less ideal educational foundation will be sufficient as preparation for and control of the industrial life? No teaching of trades, we assert, will be enough. We shall need to apply, in industrial education or in an educational plan that takes industry into account, all the methods of teaching: those that employ industry itself, but also art, erudition, and play.

It is first with industrialism as a world condition that education is concerned. Industrialism has been, as all must recognize, too individualistic. It has motives and moods and products, and it grows in social conditions, that are full of danger for society. Industrialism lacks a soul, as Bergson would say. Yet it is a movement that sweeps on with almost irresistible force. Its most characteristic product is not what it turns out in shops, but city life itself. Many would agree with Russell in saying that all the great cities are centers of deterioration in the life of their nations. Education, then, must undertake to control industrialism. This does not mean, necessarily, that it must try to check it, but that the motives in individual and social life that produce industrialism must in some way be under the control of educational forces.

First of all it seems certain that no political arrangement, and no change taking place entirely within the industrial system itself, and no simple and direct educational procedure will give us control over the forces of industrialism. It is mainly by preventing the city spirit or mood from developing too fast and thus engulfing the children of the nation that we can introduce a conscious factor strong enough to hold industrial development within bounds. This means, we must earnestly demand, turning back the flow of life from country to city by educating all children in the environment of the country. This would have a double effect upon the industrialism of the day. It would break up the present inevitable inheritance by the city child of all the ideals and moods of the city, and it would give opportunity for training in the activities that are basic to all industry, which alone, in our view, can give to industry a solid and normal foundation. By such effects, in such a general way, upon the children of an industrial nation, we might reasonably hope to prevent the evil effects upon our national life from the fatigue, the routine, and the deadening of the spirit which even under improved conditions cannot be overcome in an industrial life that is left to its monotonous grind and its morbid excitements and exaggerations.

Another work that education must in the end do for the industrial life is to infuse into it an ideal and a purpose. Industry is too individualistic, we say. It works for a living, for power, from necessity. It lacks through and through as yet the spirit of free and intelligent coöperation for common and remote ends. Coöperation in the industrial world, we have seen reason to believe, is likely to be the great word of the future. It is precisely the work of education to make the future of industry an expression of free activity, to make it democratic, and to such an extent, we might hope, that socialism, whether as a governmental interference or as a class system, would not be necessary—or possible. In trying to give industrialism an ideal, we must presumably go back to elemental mental processes. We must, in the beginning, present the world's work dramatically to the child. We must give work interest, and it is certainly one of the chief purposes of that nondescript subject we call geography thus to give the child a deep appreciation of the world as a world of men and women engaged in work. We must show industry as a world-wide purpose, not as something essentially individual and competitive. We must show it as an adventure on the part of man in which he goes forth to seek conquest over the physical world; we must think of it as a means to an end, of fulfilling purposes not all of which perhaps can as yet be foreseen, but which certainly can be no mere satisfaction of the individual's desires of the day. This is what we mean by putting a soul into industry. Soul means purpose—purpose which includes more than the desires of the individual, and in which the interests of the world as a whole are involved. Industry that has thus a purpose, and that is imbued with a spirit of freedom takes its place among the psychic forces and becomes a part of the mechanism of mental evolution. It is this idealism of industry, toward the production of which we must turn every educational resource, that must offset its materialism. This is, in part, the work of the æsthetic experiences, the dramatic presentation of the day's work to the child; but art can of course work only upon the soil of experience; the child must see the world teeming with human activity, but he must observe it in a detached way, rather than as a participant in its realism and its dull and its unwholesome moods. Then we shall have a content upon which the æsthetic motives can work. In this idealized industrial experience, we try to make visible the real motives which in the future must dominate the world's work.

All this may seem too general and too ideal, but if we do not begin with broad plans, and if we do not take a far look ahead, we shall fail now at a vital point of the social development of man. The result at which we aim is the socialisation of the motives of industry. We make work voluntary by bringing into it persuasively and insidiously deep motives and interests which represent social purposes and ideals. Given these motives and the beginning of a change from the relatively more individualistic to the relatively more social spirit in industry, the actual means of coöperation would not be far to seek. Work would become by its own inner development under such conditions, something different from an unwilling service of the individual, a compulsory service to family or state. Everything we can do to give to children and to all workers an intelligent appreciation of the social meaning and purpose of work is both industrial training and an education in basic social relations. This socialization of the moods of work and the founding of them upon the necessary experiences, is as important as anything education is at the present time called upon to do. Given this foundation, precisely the form industrial education, in the ordinary sense, shall take, seems to be of secondary importance.

Turning now to another phase of the industrial problem on its educational side, one cannot escape the conviction that the rising tide of the powers of labor presents urgent problems to the educator. The common man, as we call him, is to take a greater part in the affairs of business and state, and the education of the common man with reference to the especial capacity, as worker, in which he seeks this new position, becomes highly important. This education of the people with specific reference to work is of course something more than teaching vocation. Education, indeed, with any explicit attention to labor itself, whether in its industrial or its political implications, is but a part of the educational problem. All education for the democratic life is involved in it. The whole problem of specialization comes up, and indeed all questions of social education in one form or another.

Specialization, in particular, can no longer be treated with the indifference that has so far characterized our industrial education. The ideal of fitting the boy for work is as naïve in one way as that of our generalized education is in another. If the war has taught us anything beyond a doubt, it is that specialization must never be such a differentiation as shall infringe upon the common ground of human nature. We must take this into consideration in all our vocational training. We must preserve an identity in all the fundamental experiences. In a democracy this appears to be wholly necessary, and to outweigh all considerations of efficiency. The individual must be kept whole and generic, so that each individual is an epitome, so to speak, of the virtues and the ideals of the nation. The humanity of the man must be first, and his special function secondary. This does not imply that we must not give to all children individual and vocational training. All must be directed towards life work. We may even carry vocational training further than it has been extended anywhere as yet, but we must see that industry occupies the right place in the school, and in all educational processes. It is neither the whole method and purpose of the school, nor something simply added to the curriculum. It is a phase of the life of the school, both in its active and its receptive states. The child must live in an atmosphere in which both present and future usefulness are assumed and provided for. The idea of a life of work must be made early an accepted plan of the child, and it must be one of the entirely general tasks of the school to see that the tendency of the child in the school is toward occupation. Occupation must in fact be made to grow naturally out of the life the child leads in the school.